


Juxtaposition

by jaysayheyyy



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Hare goes on a journey, Somewhat, They'll get better, its the becile boys what do you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:42:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29527269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaysayheyyy/pseuds/jaysayheyyy
Summary: He's everything she's not, but that doesn't mean he can't try.
Kudos: 6





	Juxtaposition

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I just want to clear this up before anything else. I'm currently going through my old stuff and posting it on here. I found this today and am honestly conflicted on it. On one hand, it flows well as it is. On the other hand, Michael Reed is briefly part of it. I don't like the man, but the Michael Reed I've written has always been a character to me. I take so many liberties with canon it's not even funny, and Michael Reed is no exception to that rule. He was in this story before I revised it, which reminded me to put out this statement. 
> 
> I do not think Michael Reed is a good person, and though I have no trouble separating him from the character, I understand that others don't want to see him in fanworks for their own reasons. Therefore, I will be going back and editing all my works, past and future, to remove him from the story. Some will take longer than others, but it will be done.

She sang like she had no troubles in the world, and for that Hare hated her. Envy grew in his chest like vines decorated with thorns that dug into his core, hollowing out his heart until all that was left was venomous jealousy. It had been, what, decades? Decades since Thaddeus Becile left his life, defeated by Peter Walter’s incredible automatons, and yet it had taken Hare this long to finally face his fears. Or maybe not so much face them, per se, as watch them from afar. Peter Walter’s singing musical automatons. Originally the Steam Man Band, now Steam Powered Giraffe, with every Walter automaton having been part of the band at some point.Up on stage he saw the three current automaton band members; Zero, The Spine, and Rabbit. His heart panged at the thought of Rabbit. The very same bot he had been painstakingly modeled after. 

She looked nothing like she had when Hare had been made; now she was all curves and painted lips, long lashes and soft edges. Hare looked almost identical to her first version, save for the sharp teeth in his cheeks instead of vents. He had the same green eyes, the same copper plating, the same silver on his nose. . . If they were put side by side, people would say Hare was the past version of Rabbit, the details muddled in their memories, and Rabbit the present. It brought a sneer to his lips; he was his own automaton, wasn’t he? Yet he couldn’t convince himself of this statement. The better part of him couldn’t help but think he was just the worst version of Rabbit, built with a core that made him to be exactly that. Where Rabbit was good, he was evil. She was light and he was shadow, sunshine and moonlight, the differences between them stark.

His core was green with envy, and he couldn’t escape that. Becile had made him to be dangerous, wild and feral like some sort of animal, with teeth sharper than a shark’s and claws like that of a tiger. He was made to hurt, to destroy, and that was inevitable. When you’re built to be something you can’t just say you won’t be that; you have to conform, and this Hare knew all too well. Even if it sat strangely in his chest, heavier than the coal he ran on. He shook the thoughts away, ignoring the irritated noise some stranger at his side made as he knocked into them. 

“Nice cosplay, asshole.” They grumbled, unfortunately audible to Hare’s sensitive ears despite the music. Hare growled, but decided to ignore them, shoving his hands into his pockets. He took care not to rip the material; in his frustration he had done so many times before with his sharp fingers, and he preferred to leave with some dignity tonight. Hare ground his teeth habitually, trying to dull the edges as he watched Rabbit recite some sort of bit with her fellow performers. Something about a love song, something about a mayor, yada yada. 

“Just play the damn song already.” He muttered lowly. The jerk beside him gave him a strange look, but wisely chose not to address his comment. Finally, after what seemed like ages, the automatons on stage started singing. Hare held back a huff as it turned out, of course, to be a love song. Who would have thought? It was one he knew, but he refused to admit that he knew every damn lyric, holding himself back from tapping his foot along to the music. Honeybee was one of the first songs he’d heard when he discovered that Walter’s automatons had begun a career in singing. It had taken him a while to figure out the keyboard, but as soon as he learned how to avoid breaking or scratching off the little letters, he begrudgingly looked up Steam Powered Giraffe.

Hours later, he was buying tickets to their next few shows. And now he was here, standing in the crowd as if he somehow belonged there, trying to fit in with all the humans. He was holding back smoke in order to avoid attention, relying on the numerous humans in robot-like makeup around him to blend in. 

Midway through the song, Rabbit looked out to the crowd. Somehow, despite his discomfort, Hare looked back. There was no way she’d spot him, not in a thick crowd like this. Yet her mismatched eyes seemed to lock onto his glowing, neon green eyes, and she faltered momentarily. Hare stared back, wide-eyed, but the moment was ruined as Rabbit began to malfunction. He tugged his cap over his eyes with a frustrated growl, inwardly cursing chance and her sly attempts to bury him alive. He shoved past people with his shoulders, scared of cutting them with his claws, ignoring the many angry calls for him to cut it out. He puffed black smoke from his lips, hoping it wasn’t too obvious in the darkness, finally reaching the exit. He pushed out of the room with a shuddering breath of dark smoke, running his palms down his face in stress. He waved away the smoke and began the descent down the stairs towards the exit, but paused. 

Hare didn’t really want to go. So, he stood just outside the door, quietly listening to the rest of the concert. Out in the light where people could see him clearly, no one dared question him else they risked him snapping with his frightening teeth. His efforts to dull them down had been mostly fruitless; they were still fairly sharp. Like well-loved kitchen knives. Usable, still look sharp, but not actually too dangerous. It still bothered him, when people quickly averted their eyes as soon as he met their gaze, but it was for the better. If people stayed away, they couldn’t get hurt. Because they would get hurt if they dared come close; it was just in his nature. He had been built to be violent and cruel.

At the end of the show, as people started filing out, Hare joined the crowd once more. He began the trudge to the door when he heard someone yelling frantically. He peered over the crowd, just tall enough to see over the sea of people, and balked as he saw none other than Rabbit at the top of the stairs. 

“HEY!” She shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth, “HEY, COPPER BOT!” She was clearly looking his way, and as the crowd realized it, they began to move aside to make way for her. The Spine and Zero stepped up behind her, trying to get her attention, but she was a woman on a mission. As she began to dash down the stairs, Hare began to push past people with as much caution as he could, panic building up in his chest. He wasn’t ready for her to approach him, and maybe he would never be. All he knew in that moment was that he needed to get away ASAP, wincing at the cry of some poor person getting shoved to the floor. 

“Sorry!” He shouted over his shoulder, bursting through the double doors and out into the night city. He wildly looked for an escape and decided to slip into the nearest alley, hiding behind a garbage dumpster just as Rabbit and her brothers stepped outside. He listened with bated breath, holding his coal stove as quiet as he could. 

“Where’d he go?” Rabbit asked, steam hissing from her vents. 

“I dunno, Rabbit,” Zero replied, “Looks like he got away.”

“Don’t you think that maybe he. . . didn’t want to be found?” Spine spoke up. Rabbit sighed. 

“Maybe,” She responded, “But I gotta find ‘im anyway.” Hare stiffened as he heard footsteps growing closer, but they stopped abruptly with a yelp from Rabbit.

“I’m not letting you run off into the night at random.” Spine said firmly.

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll see him again sometime.” Zero added cheerfully. Rabbit was quiet for a moment. Finally, she must have agreed, because Hare heard her footsteps recede, followed by Zero’s. He heard the doors open, and moved to step out, when Zero spoke up, “Spine? You comin’, pal?” Hare dared to peek over the dumpster, grimacing at the gross spot he had found himself in. 

“Yeah,” Spine finally responded, and Hare caught a glimpse of silver as the titanium automaton joined his siblings inside. Only a few minutes later did Hare breathe a sigh of relief, letting out all the smog he had kept up inside. He wheezed as it clouded his vision, futilely trying to wave it all away with little success. He stepped out of the alleyway, mildly grossed out by the grime left on his shoes. For a moment he hesitated, peering inside the glass doors. Their backs were turned to him, but he could see the band mingling with fans inside. It would be so easy to just walk in and say something, anything that was on his mind, but his feet stayed stubbornly in place, as if some invisible wall had formed between him and the building. 

With a frown, Hare turned and walked away. Little did he know, Spine watched him go with his own confliction, though Spine said nothing of seeing the automaton go. 

“Hare.” Skull greeted him as he walked in, scaring the shit out of him so badly that he jumped a few feet in the air from the shock. Skull’s eyes, little pinpricks of green, glowed eerily in the dark. He was seated on the couch, by the look of it, though Hare’s night vision wasn’t as great as it used to be so he really had no clue. Hare flicked on the light with a scowl, shouting in alarm as Jack popped up with a wide grin right in front of him. 

“Motherfucker!” He exclaimed, a hand over his core. “Jeezum Jack, ya tryna give me a heart attack or somethin’?” Hare grumbled, though his mood was lifting just being back with his brothers. Jack burst into hysterical giggles, twirling around aimlessly as he wandered around their shabby living room. 

“You can’t ha-ha-ha-have a he-he-heart attack, silly!” Jack said between laughter, curling in on himself as the laughter continued uncontrollably. Hare reached out and ruffled his hair as he went by, seamlessly adjusting when Jack leaned into his touch. He looked over his brother towards Skull, wondering why they were still up. 

“Where have you been?” Skull asked, right to the point. Hare hummed and averted his eyes, focusing on messing around with Jack’s curls. 

“Somewhere.” He deflected. Skull scoffed, crossing his arms. 

“It’s late.” Skull pushed. Hare ground his teeth, ignoring the sharp, high pitched noise of metal against metal. Skull did not look amused, tapping his foot against the floor. He looked worse for wear; the taller bot had never enjoyed spending much time alone with their slightly messed up younger brother, and clearly had struggled with Hare gone. But Hare had no obligation to stay. He wasn’t tying himself down again, not like he had with Becile. Family? He inwardly scoffed. What a joke.

“Uh huh. So I gotta get ta bed.” Hare responded cheekily, his eyes alight with warning as he stared back at Skull. He ruffled Jack’s hair once more before stepping away and towards the hall, ignoring Skull’s eyes as they burned holes in his back. He trotted down the hall and into his room, calling a “goodnight” as he locked his door behind him. They didn’t need to know his nighttime ventures. If they found out, he was afraid that they’d turn on him. Call him some sort of weakling, maybe, or claim he was trying to leave them for the Walter bots. He wasn’t, but as he stared at the tickets at his bedside, he already knew he was attending the next show. No matter how guilty he felt over it.

Hare kept coming back, and every time he did, he could see her looking for him. He felt a bit guilty about stealing her attention from the show; it was obvious she was distracted. She fumbled over bits Hare knew she’d known by heart and improvised more often than not. Sometimes that worked in her favor. Other times she had to be saved by Spine or Zero. And when she finally spotted him, her unattentiveness only got worse. She just kept looking at him like he was some sort of puzzle that she could figure out through her gaze, and it made Hare uncomfortable. 

On top of that, every time Hare came back from said shows, Skull grilled him over it. Where he had been, why he’d gone, if he had any clue how long he’d been gone, if he knew just how much Jack complained about him being gone, all that and more. It grated on Hare’s nerves to the point where he just started ignoring his brothers, retiring to his room earlier and earlier every night. He knew it was only heating Skull’s furnace to dangerous, angry temperatures, but he shoved the guilt aside. He just had to keep seeing the band play. 

Why? He didn’t have a straight answer. Maybe Rabbit didn’t, either, when her siblings asked why she kept chasing after him. He just had to go back. It was a taste of a life he could never have and an escape from the one he was stuck with, in simplest terms. Rabbit was everything he could never be. He was everything she could never be, because she was good. And he was anything but. So he kept going back, listening to the music like he was some sort of fan. Which he absolutely wasn’t; he hated their music. He was lying. 

Part of him felt guilty when he left behind his siblings. Guilt-- what an idea. Family was a complex thing for him, and so the guilt of leaving home was complicated. Family was supposed to be a father who cared and siblings who could afford to be kids. Family ended up being a man who hated him and siblings who were too messed up to be anything but selfish. Hare-- well, he wasn’t perfect. But he tried. When Jack lost his marbles he made sure to stick by the kid through thick and thin. Skull was a jerk by default and he and Hare often squabbled, but they had their moments of understanding. He still reached out to Dee, just to see how she was. He was trying, even as the pieces continued to break apart in his cold, metal hands. 

So yeah, he felt guilty for leaving. But he also felt liberated. No longer weighed down by the past that haunted him. He didn’t have to constantly entertain and corral Jack. Skull wasn’t looming over him like a crude imitation of Becile. He could just sit in the crowd and yearn for a life that wasn’t his, and that could work just fine. Until it didn’t.

He had made it maybe a block or two away when he was cornered. Not by Rabbit, thank whatever awful God that was watching, but maybe by someone worse. Green eyes glowed in the dark of night, illuminating titanium skin as steam hissed from The Spine’s ventilation systems. Hare pressed against the chain link fence behind him urgently, scratching at the metal with his sharp fingers in an attempt to break his way to freedom. But his fingers had long since dulled; there was no need to sharpen them like Becile had liked anymore, and though they could still cut, they couldn’t do the same as they used to. Hare sneered defensively at the Walter automaton carefully considering him, squaring his shoulders with a puff of black smoke. 

“Whaddya want, huh?” Hare challenged. The Spine stared at him. Hare growled. “I know ya can speak. Get on with it.”

“Rabbit’s been looking for you,” The Spine said. Hare barked a laugh. 

“Nah, really?” He asked sarcastically. Spine’s brows furrowed in what looked like a mix between confusion and irritation. “I couldn’t tell-- I thought she was chasin’ me for fun.” Wouldn’t be the first time, Hare wanted to remark as he thought of Jack, but bit back the words. That was too personal. He didn’t know the Walter automatons; he only knew their stage personas, really. It would be utterly stupid of him to try and be friendly. He wasn’t friendly, he was mean and bitter. 

“Can’t you just hear her out, at least?” Spine asked. 

“Ain’t nothin’ to hear.” Hare retorted. “What’s she even want, huh?” He asked, too curious for his own good. He half expected Spine to snap at him, lose his patience like Becile always had, but Spine shrugged. 

“Something about the war.” He said. Hare gave him a quizzical, cautious look. “She wouldn’t explain exactly what she wanted to say. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Hare repeated incredulously. Spine was sorry? Was he sorry for being one of the reasons Hare and his brothers were broken beyond repair by the man who created them? Was he sorry for being the very thing Skull was supposed to live up to, only for Skull to fail time and time again? Did Spine know that just by existing, he ruined lives? Hare’s shoulders shook with bitter laughs. He mimed wiping away a tear and flashed a grin with all his sharp teeth on display. 

“Think about it. Rabbit really wants to meet you.” Spine said, and left Hare standing in the dirty alleyway in the middle of the night.

“She already has.” Hare told the empty, cold air. 

Hare opened the door with a click. It was too quiet. He didn’t dare flick on the lights, slinking into his tiny little apartment with hesitant steps. A spark of fear ignited in his wire veins. This felt too familiar. It felt like Becile waiting for him in tense silence, ready to punish him in a brand new, awful way. Hare took a shuddering breath of smoke, straining his optics to see in the dark. There was no one there, he assured himself, and quietly entered the kitchen. He couldn’t drink water like the Walter automatons; he didn’t run on steam. Becile wasn’t clever enough to puzzle that out and had to resort to a much less clean source of fuel. The apartment walls were blackened with soot from the smoke. In the dim kitchen light he could reach out and draw a mark in the ashen grey, grimacing at the ash that came back on his finger. 

Hare took one of the very few glasses from the cabinet and blew the dust off it, carefully holding it under the tap so no water could get into the seams of his fingers, filling the glass with water to halfway. Then he held it up to eye level and just looked at it, Spine’s words still echoing in his head. Rabbit wanted to meet him again. Rabbit wanted to talk about the war. Hare. . . wasn’t sure what he wanted. 

“You’re home late. Again.” Hare heard and swore, dropping the glass to the kitchen floor in his shock. He leapt away from the spray of water, an explosion of shards flying past his legs and harmlessly bouncing off Skull’s shoes. The taller automaton looked infuriated, his vents alight as his furnace heated up and ate at his coal fuel in response to his anger. Hare hadn’t seen him this upset since. . . Well, since they’d lived with Becile. Skull only got angry like that when Hare did something he knew would get them in trouble. 

“Come on, Skull.” Hare groused, looking away nervously. His eyes caught the growing puddle of water. A good excuse. “Now there’s water everywhere.” 

“Cut it out.” Skull snapped, his eyes flashing. Hare held back a flinch. “You’ve been seeing the Walter automatons.” He hissed accusingly, stepping closer to Hare. Hare couldn’t help but step back, hitting his back against the counter. He met Skull’s eyes daringly, his signature sneer curling back his lips as best as he could with his welded jaw. 

“I ain’t.” Hare snapped back. 

“Don’t lie to me!” Skull thundered, a hand whipping out to point at the mess of glass and water on the floor. “You’ve been seeing those bastards. Admit it.” Hare growled at his brother lowly. 

“And what if I have, huh?” He challenged. Skull surprised him by taking his shirt in shaking hands, slamming him against the wall with a loud bang. Hare’s eyes widened as his systems were momentarily jarred, smoke puffing from his vents. He coughed, the reaction unpleasant and uncontrollable, clawing at Skull’s hands and kicking at the air. 

“Lemme go, ya bastard!” Hare shouted. Skull pushed him into the wall again. 

“What’s so great about them?” Skull shouted back. “You gonna run off and pretend you’re like them? Somethin’ good, someone innocent? Bull!” Skull tossed Hare to the floor, right into the puddle of water. Hare scrambled to get away, but his back was already soaked. He spit out a plethora of curses, quickly getting to his feet. He was about to roll up his sleeves and fight back when he spotted Jack watching from down the hall and froze. 

“Skull, that’s enough!” Hare exclaimed. “Ain’t no reason to fight in front’a Jackie boy--” But Skull wasn’t listening, caught up in his whirlwind of fury. He swung at Hare and landed a solid left hook, Hare’s systems stalling as he stumbled. His balance went askew and he reached out to stabilize himself on a nearby shelf, sparks flying from his broken face. Hare couldn’t help but throw a punch back, trying to create distance between them, and soon the brothers were struggling to hit the other, knees and elbows and fists flying as they scrapped. Hare didn’t want to fight and pulled his punches. Skull was too pissed to care. 

Another punch had Hare’s ears ringing, his speakers likely broken or damaged somehow, and for a moment he thought he was done for. Skull was yelling incomprehensibly, Jack was babbling in a panic, and Hare was going down to the floor. Skull stalked closer, intending to finish Hare off and win the fight, but Jack leapt into action and tackled Skull to the ground. Jack never fought with them, not like that. Maybe he was chaotic beyond belief and clinically insane, but he didn’t get into fistfights. 

Shocked, Hare struggled to his feet. Jack turned around, blue eyes wide as the light in them shone past his thick curls. He still had Skull pinned, but Skull wasn’t fighting back. He was probably just as shocked at their younger brother’s intervention as he was. 

“Go!” Jack yelled. Hare didn’t waste a moment; he turned and ripped the door open so hard it almost fell off its hinges. Let the neighbors file a noise complaint; he just needed to get away. He needed to erase the image of realization dawning on Skull as he saw what he’d done to Hare. He had to go as far away as he could, and so his feet carried him as fast as they could, his systems all trying to compensate for the broken parts.

The manor had been on the edge of town. When Hare and his brothers packed up to leave the place, none of them wanted to stay anywhere near the house that had trapped them for so long. But there was still the matter of Dee refusing to leave, and then they didn’t have any money to find a decent place, and technically robots couldn’t even buy or rent property. . . So they had to settle for a shady deal lined with distrust and lots of bribery, an apartment not too far from the manor they’d tried to escape. 

This is how Hare found himself wading through the weeds of the ruined garden he used to escape to on the bad days. The stone paths were cracked and weathered, grass breaking through persistently. The flowers had fought for dominance and wound around each other like snakes trying to choke each other out. Some had overgrown into the paths. Even so, it was still too easy for Hare to navigate through the battered maze and stop at the fallen corpse of Becile’s giant copper elephant. The ribs climbed towards the heavens, but just like Becile they’d never make it there, tethered to this earth by all the awful things they’d done. This elephant had waged war against its master’s once best friend turned mortal enemy. It had betrayed. It had ruined. It had killed. 

It was only fitting, then, that Hare and his brothers had buried Becile under the ribs of that horrid elephant. Why Hare found himself standing at that grave now, he had no clue. His feet had just gone on autopilot, he supposed. He traced the lines of his cracked and torn metal absentmindedly, watching the errors pop up in his vision. 

“You were a bastard, you know that?” Hare told the cold stone of the grave. “Look at us. We’re--” Hare cut himself off, the image of Skull’s fist coming closer flashing in his head. He breathed a heavy sigh. “We’re messed up.” But the grave had no answers. It had no frosty words or threats of punishment, and that felt worse, somehow. Hare deserved some sort of consequence for what he’d done, didn’t he? He stared at the dirt for a moment. “I guess. . . I should go get this fixed, huh?” He pondered. “I’d rather put off joinin’ ya in Hell for as long as I can.” With a bitter smile, Hare turned his back on his father’s dead body. 

The Walter manor wasn’t hard to find. What was hard was gathering his pride and setting it all aside to show up on their doorstep with his back still soaked, twitching from the droplets of water redirecting the flow of electricity from where it was supposed to go. It took him a moment to raise a hand and rap his knuckles against the door. It took all his willpower to stay still, impatiently waiting for someone to swoop in and rescue him. He scoffed; what was he, some sort of princess? He had half a mind to turn around to find someone else, really anyone other than the Walters whom he’d been raised to hate, but hey. Maybe this was the start of something new. 

The door swung open with a creak, and Hare found himself meeting the wide, heterochromatic eyes of none other than Rabbit. They both stared at each other in mutual loss of words. Hare because he had been hoping that he’d make it through this without encountering her, and Rabbit because all that time she’d spent chasing him now seemed worthless with him literally on her doorstep. 

“You’re hurt.” Was the first thing Rabbit said. Hare swallowed his sarcasm. 

“Yeah. Can I. . . get some help?” A spasm momentarily took over his body as a droplet of water decided it would invade his wiring. 

“Yes! Yes, uh-- Camille! Chelsea!” Rabbit called urgently. Hare let her take his arm and lead him wherever she needed to, his mind hazy from the errors blaring and the lack of fuel. There were people talking around him, but he couldn’t really focus on them. 

“Think I’m gonna pass out.” Hare said, and he did just that. 

Waking was slow. He felt. . . Different. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, his eyes adjusting far slower than he was used to, the focus in his cameras struggling before he finally made out what he was looking at. A few people sat around him. A woman with blue hair and white skin was putting away tools in front of him. Rabbit was pacing in the background. The Spine was talking to her, sat on a workbench. And The Jon was sat on the bench opposite his silver brother, kicking his legs as he hummed a tune. Hare watched for a moment, stunned at the domesticity of it. There was no tension, no tiptoeing around each other or forced happiness. 

“Hey, you’re awake.” The woman said as soon as she noticed Hare observing. 

“Sure am.” Hare replied automatically. He expected her to get irked at Hare’s instinctive sarcasm, but she just laughed. 

“I’m Chelsea.” She introduced herself. “And you must be Hare.” She noticed Hare’s quizzical look and elaborated, “Rabbit told us about you.” Ah. Hare nodded, feeling subdued in the face of such kindness. It was strange. He was used to alot more bickering. “Now,” Chelsea spoke up, ignoring Rabbit as she tried to get Hare’s attention behind her, “I’m not gonna ask how you got so beat up. I’m just gonna tell you that I fixed it all, and then some.” 

“Huh?” Hare spoke intelligently. “There was more?” It was Chelsea’s turn to look confused. 

“Your jaw.” She said, leaning aside to rifle through the drawer to his left. “I guess after so long compensating for it, you wouldn’t have noticed. Here--” She held up what he had been looking for; a slightly dusty mirror. For a moment, Hare was speechless. There weren’t sharp teeth decorating his cheeks anymore, but sleek, copper vents hiding slightly duller teeth. Chelsea was explaining how she had to adjust Hare’s teeth for safety, but Hare was too busy admiring the shiny new metal. No one had ever been that kind to him, he thought distantly. “So that’s all okay?” Chelsea asked, pulling Hare back to the present. 

“It’s perfect.” Hare said, working his jaw experimentally. No more sticking. 

“Hare!” Rabbit chirped, leaning in too close to Hare. He leaned back with a small grimace. Spine tugged her back with an exasperated look, though Hare could see amusement hidden in his expression. “You-you-you came.”

“. . . I did.” Hare responded hesitantly. “Finally stopped runnin’.” Rabbit sat herself in front of him with a small smile. 

“I didn’t want to take up too mu-mu-much of your time,” Rabbit said. “I just-- back in the war.” She paused, glancing up at Hare to gauge his reaction. “Do you remember? You jumped in the way and--”

He did it without thinking, really. One moment he was firing, the next he was cutting the limb of his own ally, the elephant falling aside with a pained trumpet. He shoved the golden automaton aside and sliced the elephant in half, shielding his eyes from the shower of sparks and metal flying towards him. The only thing he could ask himself was if Jack was okay, but when he pushed himself to his feet and got a good look at just who he’d saved, he saw the glow of a blue matter core and illuminated blue eyes wide from shock staring back at him. 

“You saved me.” Jon breathed. Hare stared at him for a moment. He saved him. Why? He looked like Jack. But did he regret saving the life of an enemy? Hare couldn’t bring himself to say yes, even though he knew he should have. Jon and his siblings were the enemies. They were trying to kill Hare and his brothers. And yet they were at a standstill, neither automaton daring to move, until a copper hand reached out and tugged Jon to his feet roughly. Rabbit glared at Hare, but she didn’t attack. 

Instead, she jerked her head aside and said, “Go.” 

“Hare?” He heard, and abruptly snapped back to reality with a distressed puff of thick, black smoke. The bots and their mechanic were all staring at him worriedly, but Hare shook himself out of his daze. He had jumped in the way of an elephant because he wanted to save his brother. He hadn’t attacked Rabbit or Jon even though he could have ended them in seconds. Rabbit. . . had given him mercy. And Hare had, too, hadn’t he? If Rabbit, all that was good with her blue core, had done the same as him, everything that was evil with his green core, didn’t that mean he could be good? 

“I have to go.” He spoke, reeling from the realization. 

“Did I do somethin’?” Rabbit asked worriedly, but stepped aside as Hare slid off the workbench and gathered his cap. He fit it snugly on his head and looked to the Walter members solemnly. There was no time to waste; he had his brothers to get back to. It was time to stop playing this game of cat and mouse. Because he could be kind. He could be merciful. He didn’t have to adhere to Becile’s rules anymore; he was free. 

“My family’s waitin’.” He said, offering no further explanation. But it seemed that none of them needed one, because they let him pass with no questions. He knew they were watching him go, wondering what this meant for the Walter and Becile families, but all that could wait. Skull had hurt him. But Hare could be forgiving. 

The door creaked now, the hinges still broken from his abrupt departure. Even so, Skull needed no indicator of Hare’s arrival, as he was pacing in the living room with Jack watching him from the couch, rocking back and forth as he babbled to himself in nonsensical phrases. Both of them stilled as Hare stepped into their crude, abysmally tiny apartment, looking to him with wide eyes. None of them were ones for apologies or tearful reunions. So Hare did what he knew to do; he grinned, flashing his brand new vents, tipped his hat, and said,

“Boys, I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> How is almost 6K words only 9 pages? Or do I just have a weird sense of what a high word count is??


End file.
